Page 22 of Just Come Over
“My mommy always reads me a story at night,” she said. “So I don’t have bad dreams.”
“Have you been having bad dreams since your mum’s been gone?” he asked.
Her arms tightened around his neck, and he felt her nod against his chest. “Well,” he said over the lump in his throat, “I reckon we’d better read a story, then.” He reached over and got the dinosaur book from the pocket beside her seat.
When he straightened, Ilona was behind him. He said, “One sec,” then stepped back and into his seat so she could get by.
“All right?” she asked.
“Yeh. Bit of a rough patch, that’s all. We’re just going to read a story.”
“Aw,” she said. “The poor wee thing. Bit scary, on a plane for the first time. She’s got such a look of you, hasn’t she? Buckle up, though, will you? We’re likely to hit a rough patch up ahead.”
She knew he wasn’t married anymore, he was sure. She also probably knew that he and Victoria hadn’t had kids. She was, in fact, putting two and two together, like everybody else would be.
Nothing but what he’d expected. He was all good. He didn’t live his life for the media.
He did buckle them in, although it was a tight fit with Casey in his lap. After that, he switched on his overhead light, got his blanket out of the plastic wrap, draped it over the two of them, reclined his seat, then opened the book at random and began to read.
A Velociraptor runs on her hind legs, her small, nimble forelegs with their razor-sharp middle claws held in front of her bounding body,he murmured, as close to Casey’s ear as he could manage, since you hardly wanted to shout this sort of thing at the whole plane.She ishunting with her pack, and the stakes are higher today, because she has a nest full of young to feed. When the pack finds a herd of grazing Protoceratops, they quickly single one out: an older male, wandering at the back of the herd. One by one, they leap to the attack, forcing the much larger animal to turn in circles, trying to face them head-on with his armored neck frill, leaving his vulnerable body unprotected. He delivers a savage blow with his heavy tail, and a Velociraptor falls, but another leaps into its place, biting into the four-legged herbivore’s belly with its dozens of saw-like teeth.
Huh. A bit bloodthirsty. He stopped, and Casey sighed and murmured, “Read more.”
No accounting for taste, he guessed.
Today,he read on,the pack wins the battle, and our Velociraptor mother gorges on the unlucky Protoceratops, perhaps regurgitating part of her meal later, back at her nest, to feed her young, just as many birds do now. Tomorrow, the outcome may be different. A broken bone from a crashing tail or a dispute with another of its kind, and our Velociraptor’s life in the fiercely competitive world of the late Cretaceous could come to a sudden end.
“Sounds like rugby,” he said.
Casey didn’t answer. She was asleep.
“I’d enjoy family time so much more,” Zora’s brother Hayden complained on the phone on Thursday night, two days after Rhys had cancelled on her, “if it involved more margaritas and dancing and fewer school recitals and jigsaw puzzles. And I’m not evenmentioningcompulsory P.E. A treetop adventure park? You know what a devoted uncle I am, but allow me to say that I cannot wait until Isaiah’s old enough to think that ‘Sunday’ means ‘brunch’ and not ‘something I’d rather do at the gym, if I have to do it at all.’ Here’s an idea. Maybe the two of you would like to go to a gallery opening instead. Very avant-garde, and I may have a wee thing for the artist. Picture black-rimmed specs and bright blue eyes. Anyway, I thought you were going to see Sexy Rhys’s new place on Sunday. He’s bound to think that swinging from ropes is a brilliant way to spend his day off. Why don’t you invite him instead?”
“He cancelled.”
“Oh.” A pause, and a different, more cautious tone when Hayden asked, “Why?”
“He said he was leaving town for a few days.”
“I thought he was coaching the Blues. Aren’t they playing their opener at Eden Park next week? Which shows you how much I love you, that I know that. I onlydoknow it because I checked. And I onlycheckedbecause you told me he was living here, in the same boringly leafy suburb as you, oddly enough, and that he’d asked you over to ‘give me advice about my furniture.’ I wondered at the time, ‘Why is she telling me all this?’”
“I told you why. Because Isaiah dented his car, and I wanted to know how obligated I was.”
“Yeh. See, I didn’tquitebelieve you. Or him.Everybodywas lying, in my humble opinion, except possibly Isaiah. No man with that many scars on his forehead invites a woman over because he wants advice on where to put his furniture. He doesn’t care where he puts his furniture, as long as the couch faces the TV and the bed’s big enough.”
“Uncalled-for and stereotypical hetero-normativity.” She thought that was pretty good.
“Except not, because I’d bet money it’s true. So you’re meant to believe that he’s leaving town, even though he’s gotjusta bit on the line here, being the new coach and all. He’s sorted out where to put his couch and TV and doesn’t need your opinion after all, so never mind?”
“That’s what he said. So, you see—I need something to do on Sunday.”
Hayden sighed. “Right. I will climb trees and buy the hamburgers and be an uncle, just because I love both of you, and somebody has to do it. I’d also love to tell Rhys Fletcher that he’s as dodgy as his brother. I’d say I’d threaten bodily harm next time I see him, or at least hint at it, except that he’d kill me, so I won’t. I’ll tell you instead. Some men get off on jerking your chain. I wouldn’t have said he was one of them. Too straightforward, I’d have said, but I’d have been wrong, because jerking women’s chain seems to be a genetic trait.”
“Dylan wasn’t—” she started.
“Dylan was. You can tell Isaiah whatever you like. Don’t try to tell me.”
She rang off and wished she could believe her brother, that Rhys had been messing with her. The truth was, though, that he’d regretted making the date—the friendly breakfast invitation—as soon as he’d done it.
